Extended Practice: 12: Breeze Records

Record Label Branding
Me and Harrison felt that the brief set by DR.ME earlier in the year has the potential to be developed into something much more substantial and is something we're interested in proceeding with. Therefore we have decided to extend the DR.ME record sleeve brief and take it to the next step and fully brand a record label that would enable us to produce multiple record covers.

We both have similar research methodologies and started off with creating a pin board in the attempt to establish a visual ground we both want to achieve.

Name Ideas
We both started reading up on music terminologies and threw around words we felt were relative to music and the process of collecting:

Editions
Archive
Version
Volume
Impression
Imprint
Issue
Catalogue
Index
Chronicle
Record
Label
Inventory
Platform

So far our favourites that stand out are; Editions, Catalogue, Index and Inventory which all refer to the concept of vinyl in a way buyers can relate to. Catalogue, Index and Inventory all refer to the idea of collecting and archiving vinyl records, you have back catalogues, inventories of records and you index your collection. Editions refers to the limited of numbers that are pressed, not many records nowadays are continuously pressed.

Another name we liked was 'impression', it relates to the process of creating a record and how the grooves are impressions within the vinyl itself and that is what makes the sound as the needle glides through these grooves. I loved this idea and thought about how this could work as an actual name, resulting in 'Good Impressions'. I felt this was a very clever name which could be worked with, but Harrison was unsure. We decided to carry on thinking of names and keep this as a back-up plan.

I also stumbled across the word 'assembly'. We liked the sound of the name 'Assembly Records' but weren't sure if it would work or whether we felt it was the strongest name we could think of.

To get an idea of what vinyls currently being sold actually look like, me and Harrison took a trip down to Jumbo Records in town. We took a few photographs of things that interested us:

We found that the ones we liked the most had some part of the design that remained the same across different releases. This made us think that we should create a system as opposed to individual designs for different bands, a grid or layout that allows us to replace the imagery and text but keep the same overall design. We also looked in this book, which gave us more of an insight into vinyl covers but wasn't very useful as it only really had examples of individual covers whereas we want to create a whole record label brand identity.

Harrison had an interview in London, and so I took this opportunity to spend the day churning out some visual ideas to see if I could come up with anything. I first started by gathering some visuals to help inspire me.

We have seen the above project before, and both love it. It works so well because there is a strong visual system in place that allows for different imagery to be used without losing consistency. This is something that we saw in Jumbo Records and is something that I feel we would need.

I then went about creating my own visuals.

I had been playing around with various different elements but kept coming back to similar ideas. However, as I had seen a project that I really liked I was struggling to come up with something new and different. I carried on in an attempt to find a system that worked.

I really liked the idea of using some form of grid which would produce boxes above the image that could be used as blank space to insert information. I felt like this could produce the design system I was looking for and so I carried on hoping something would happen.

I had explored using shape within the design a little more but didn't like the outcomes. I wanted to use bright colours to give the sense of the design being modern and new. I also felt like larger text would help to prevent any legibility issues which I was currently having.

Brief Change
When Harrison got back, I showed him the work I had done. We both felt that the brief had creative limits and that vinyl records were currently overdone in todays society and that a different music venture would be more beneficial and creatively exciting. I was looking through images of old VHS tapes when I had the idea to use cassettes instead of vinyls. We both instantly knew that this would prove to be a much more interesting brief and was something no one else has really explored.

Compact cassettes work with a single double sided insert that can range from a basic insert to a 5 fold insert. The target market stays very similar because the same a vinyls they reach out to an audience that like to differ them self from mainstream society, people that take pride in ownership and seek limited number pieces. As a result of this uncertainty around vinyls we made the decision to switch to cassettes.

The part about this change which I really liked was the idea that what I had spent all day doing could be adapted and translated into the new design (meaning I hadn't wasted a whole day).

However, we were still a bit stumped on a name. After having spent hours throwing around various names, Harrison just came out with 'Breezeblock Records' which instantly sounded perfect. It works because of the various meanings it brings with it: each artist that we have under our record label would be a block and together they are stronger. The record label as a whole would therefore be a brick wall, which represents strength and support.

Background
Breeze Records is a recently formed independent record label situated in Leeds specialising in the production and release of artists on compact cassettes. Their aim is to offer a unique sound experience through a somewhat obsolete medium and target a gap in an ever growing market for music collectables.

Brief
Brand identity and art direction for the Independent Leeds based record label Breeze Records. The branding system is required to be applied across various formats and still have the same impact on a small scale as it would on a large scale.

Tone of Voice
The tone of voice needs to be reflective of the users, it needs to fit into a specific hip culture and must have a certain look and feel to it therefore it must speak to the users through the style and aesthetic because that is what the audience concerns themselves with.

Target Audience

Although being a niche, Breeze Records targets a large hip culture sector that prides itself on the collection of obscure/dated items, as well as the large group of music collectors and people interested in the specific bands on the label.

Mandatory Requirements

Logo

Branding System

Compact Cassette Inserts

Packaging
Marketing Colateral

I started by doing some research into cassettes, of which there wasn't a great deal. This gave us much more creative scope as, with this being an area that has been basically ignored, we could basically do anything that we wanted.

We also thought about our target audience and the kind of things that they would be into. This led us to look at Crapisgood, and to this image. We feel that this sort of aesthetic would work perfectly with our cassette label.

I produced some variations of logos. However, I instantly had an idea of what I wanted to create which was a 3-D style brick wall. We wanted our logo and design to resemble that of places like Village Bookstore, as they appeal to a similar audience to us.

With this in mind, I created these:

Final logos:

I then started creating the layout for the insert of the cassette. We wanted to create something that was simple and remained the same for every different band, allowing us to create visuals for an infinite amount of bands without losing consistency. Both Harrison and I gathered imagery from Tumblr and Pinterest that we felt shared a similar aesthetic to that of Village Bookstore and the Crapisgood movement:

Not all of these would be used, and they don't link to the bands. They will just be used as example images to look nice and show how the system works in allowing for different imagery. I then went about creating the layout for the outside of the insert.

We were very happy with my designs at this point. I thought about the vinyl work I had done previously and thought about how I could incorporate elements of it. I felt that the design above would look like we hadn't done anything when viewed inside an actual cassette case (the image would be the only thing visible from the font). I then remembered an element I had included at an earlier date that could easily be included:

The small box with the name in. I felt that this would work perfectly within our new designs. It almost resembles an old label maker, reinforcing that idea of nostalgia.

Finals:

Experiments:

I then attempted to create the inside of the insert, which would have the band info on. I started with a very basic layout.

However, I felt that this was very boring and not very modern, something we wanted to get across with our design. We wanted to make sure we had a perfect balance of both new and old. I thought about mixing it up by rotating the text.

We both preferred this a lot, and decided that this would be printed on a pastel coloured stock. The final would look something like below:

I then had to input all of the information for the different bands that we chose. We ended up choosing bands that were fairly unknown and on record labels that were aimed at a similar target audience to ourselves. A lot of these were found on record labels such as 4AD: